Friday, October 24, 2008

Changing Default Browser in Vista

I have been having problems setting the default browser in Vista. Originally, I had problems setting Firefox as the default browser for all functions computer wide, eventually, through some trickery and a tip found on CNET I fixed that problem. Recently I installed Google Chrome browser...which I like a lot in some ways. But again, I had problmes getting it to be the default browser. I searched for some tips on how to fix this, but the browser is so new, there is not much information. Yesterday I discovered Mozilla Minefield, which is the next version of Firefox, currently in alpha dev. It is still super buggy, but it did manage to take control of my existing Firefox install. This screwed things up really badly on my computer and I decided I had to fixe the Chrome default problme once and for all. 

A lot of my problems on this Vista install seem to be caused by user access level issues. Vista says this makes my computer more secure. I say it makes things break and not work correctly. I found a posting on Techarena.in which shows exactly how to overcome this default browser issue. Here are the steps to follow:

1) Make sure Chrome is closed.
2) Right click the Chrome shortcut and select Properties.
3) Go to the Compatibility tab
4) Check "Run as Administrator"
5) Run Chrome
6) Click the "Allow" selection in the UAC prompt
7) In Chrome, go to Tools / Option and select "Make Chrome my Default Browser" (this step is what most people suggest to do from the beginning, except it wont work unless you are running as administrator, and even then it might not work correctly.)
8) You may want to remove the Run as Administrator option as you will get hit with the UAC prompt every time you open Chrome or a new tab.


This process totally works, it fixes all of my default browser issues including default links from outlook and google desktop search.